Quotes from C. A. R. Hoare

You cannot teach beginners top-down programming, because they don't know which end is up.

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

What was amazing was that a large team of highly intelligent programmers could labor so hard and so long on such an unpromising project. You know, you shouldn't trust us intelligent programmers. We can think up such good arguments for convincing ourselves and each other of the utterly absurd. Especially don't believe us when we promise to repeat an earlier success, only bigger and better next time.